When conducting the operational management of systems such as information and communication technology (ICT) systems, the system configuration is often changed due to installation, version upgrade, or the like of the operating system (OS) and the middleware.
As an effective technique for changing the system configuration, there has been proposed a module test support apparatus capable of efficiently carrying out a module unit test for ensuring the reliability of software that is newly installed, for example. There has also been proposed a technique that efficiently verifies the validity of the execution environment, consistency, and continuous executability of a batch file.
When changing the system configuration, it is important to improve the efficiency of changing the configuration. Changing the system configuration involves work such as starting and stopping the system, changing the setting values of the system, updating the software, and so on, for example. Thus, if the administrator creates a work procedure from scratch each time such work is needed, the work efficiency decreases, and errors are likely to occur.
In view of the above, it has been proposed to create an operation procedure specific to an operation object system by using an existing operation procedure. For example, there is a technique that outputs procedure information containing specific information specific to a system to which changes are to be made, based on a collection of procedure information pieces each indicating an operation procedure for a configuration change corresponding to the content of a system configuration change. With this technique, it is possible to improve the efficiency of changing the system configuration.
See, for example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 06-250884, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-146503, and International Publication Pamphlet No. WO2012/124018.
However, the conventional techniques reuse an entire previously-executed operation procedure that includes a series of operations. Therefore, it is not possible to reuse the operation procedure unless the operation object system is in an environment in which the entire operation procedure is executable. That is, the operation procedure may be reused only in limited situations. For example, if even a part of the operations included in the operation procedure is not executable by the operation object system, it is not possible to reuse the operation procedure to create a new operation procedure for the operation object system. Therefore, patterns of operation procedures that may be created by reusing previously-executed operation procedures of work are limited. Thus, it might not be possible to generate an intended operation procedure.